Just an update on this saga....
It seems like the BRACE family may have actually started life as the BRUCE family!
By doing a heck of a lot of cross-referencing I have found that there was a John Downing Brace baptised in Manchester in 1799 the son of William and Anne.
John Downing Brace marries a Mary Anne Jameson in 1837 and we find that the census returns for this family ( a bit patchy for Lancashire in general) show John and Mary. So far so good and the age would be about right. Mary Ann is indicated as being 45 years of age, whereas John is 40. Given that the 1841 census rounded up or down to the nearest five years it is no surprise then to find Mary Anne Jameson baptised Manchester, 27 May 1798 to Peter Jameson and Mary Ann, as usual Cathedral, Manchester.
Problem, John Brace's children are born in the period 1820-1836.
Back to the drawing board-
The positvely identified children seem to be baptised to John and Nancy!
At a long shot Mary Ann could have been Nancy and they were married after they had all of their children, but it doesn't seem very likely at all. On checking the census returns I noticed a couple of them had the name Bruce in parentheses under Brace so I gave it a go whilst looking for a missing Martha Brace and lo' and behold-
Martha BRUCE
30 MAR 1836 Cathedral, Manchester baptised to
John Downing BRUCE and Nancy
Now it could be coincidence but the middle name is only found with this one chap as far as the records go! Furthermore,
John BRUCE marries and ANN McKitrick in 1818, Cathedral, Manchester.
If I am not mistaken "NANCY" was a nickname for ANN that came to be a name in its own right.
I am not 100% certain on this but it all seems to fit and we have at least one instance of the same man, two wives, a variation on the surname and judging by some of the other Bruces in Manchester some traditions of names, namely Harriet, Ann and William.
Going back a bit we have William Brace marrying Ann Downina, Cathedral, Manchester 13th May 1792.
As for Ann, a possible is the Nanny Downing baptised to William and Judith in 1759 in Stretford but the records are already quite patchy in the 18th century and so it is hard to tell.
So this seems to solve one puzzle only to start off another one!
Were the Brace family Bruces? Or were the Bruce family Braces? The possible marriage of a Bruce to Anne McKiterick all of a sudden suggests Scots/Northern Irish whereas the Brace families seem to have spread out from Herefordshire.
Oh for a simple life...
Don't you sometimes wish there were an 1831 census at least!!!
But it just goes to show what pops up when you do a lot of cross referencing with "ambiguous" names!